The First Confessor (14 page)

“How did this Merritt get the men killed?”

The first man looked up at her, indignation clearly evident in his eyes. Magda held her lantern off to the side, making it look as if she were trying to stay out of the way, but in doing so it put her face in shadow and lit his.

“Merritt refused to help us any longer in crafting a critical weapon. Five brave wizards went to their death as a result.” The muscles in his jaw flexed when he clenched his teeth. “Now two more have just died trying to accomplish the task Merritt abandoned instead of leading. The third man, at least, will recover, though he may be blinded. I don’t know how many more we will lose until, the Creator be willing, we are successful.”

“I’m sorry,” Magda said in a sympathetic tone.

“Merritt should have been there,” the second man in line said.

The first man grunted his agreement as he moved on past Magda. She noticed that he smelled of smoke and burned flesh. As he passed close, she saw specks of blood splattered across his robes.

Magda lowered her head so that the second two men, holding glowing spheres that cast cold, greenish light up across their heated expressions, wouldn’t recognize her. All three swiftly disappeared back into the darkness.

Once the men were out of earshot, Tilly leaned closer. “Wizards,” she confided before starting out once again.

Magda had suspected that they were wizards by their simple robes. She had known they were when she had looked into their eyes.

While she had no gift for magic, she did have the rare knack of being able to see the gift in the eyes of those who possessed it. She’d always thought of it as merely a form of intuition. Baraccus had said that it was more. He had told her that, while she was ungifted in the overt sense, she had latent abilities that set her apart in at least some small ways from others who were ungifted.

He’d said that the spark of life was stronger in her than in most people. That, he said, was what he saw in her eyes, that she was not merely beautiful but intelligent, unusual, rare. He had sometimes looked into her eyes and whispered to himself how bewitching she was, as if she weren’t there hearing him, as if he were all alone looking upon some exceptional specimen rather than his wife.

Magda never thought of herself as exceptional, but she did feel lucky that he thought so.

She recalled quite clearly the first time she had looked into Baraccus’s eyes. She remembered feeling momentarily lost for words as she gazed in those gentle, knowing eyes. Looking into his eyes had made her feel safe. She had known that he was gifted, of course, but she’d also seen a handsome older man behind those abilities that she was inexplicably drawn to. Who knew the ways of love?

Besides being aware of the presence of the gift in the eyes of all three men, Magda was pretty sure that she recognized the first two. She didn’t know their names, but she thought that she had seen both of them before. Magda had occasionally gone with Baraccus on some of his frequent visits down into the lower Keep to see his wizards. She thought that she must have seen the men one of those times because she didn’t recall them ever coming to see Baraccus in their apartments.

She also thought that she recalled the name Merritt. Baraccus met with a lot of gifted people and he didn’t always introduce her. She knew when he preferred that she remain in the background or even out of sight, such as when people came to discuss confidential matters or to report trouble. There had been times, after such visitors left, that he would stand at a window, stoically staring out at the city of Aydindril below.

Sometimes, though, when visitors left he would tell her their names and what it had been about. On occasion he talked to her about people he’d met with down in the lower Keep. The name Merritt sounded familiar, though she couldn’t place a face with the name. It could be that she’d never seen him, merely heard Baraccus mention him.

Magda would rather not be returning to the lower reaches of the Keep. It was an unnerving place in the best of times, to say nothing of some of the things she had heard from Baraccus, but it was even more so, now, in light of Tilly’s warnings, yet Magda didn’t know what else to do. She had run out of ideas and needed to find answers.

After Lord Rahl had left, she’d spent weeks making discreet inquiries, all to no avail. She had spoken to every wizard and sorceress she knew, at least the ones she felt comfortable enough to approach. Most were sympathetic, but no one knew anything that was in the least bit useful to her.

Magda knew that Baraccus confided little in others, even the gifted, except for specific things they needed to know. Her questions had only confirmed it. Others knew only small bits of the picture. Magda had been a bit surprised to come to the realization that she knew a great deal more about Baraccus and his activities than did anyone else, even the people he regularly worked with.

Through Baraccus, Magda had seen more of the larger picture of the war, complex alliances, and covert activities than any of them, even if she didn’t know some of the finer details. Other people saw the details of small segments, while she in many cases glimpsed the overview of all the things with which Baraccus dealt. She had a deeper insight into how all the parts that various people knew about were connected.

Even Lord Rahl, one of the men Baraccus trusted most, was not a great deal different. Baraccus might have trusted him with more vital missions than he entrusted to others, but he hadn’t trusted him with everything. Even with as many details as Alric Rahl knew about the dream walkers, he didn’t know as much as Magda about the larger picture.

Her husband had been a man who closely guarded not only his secrets, but his activities and the reasons behind most of the things he did. He’d often said that keeping things to himself was a matter of survival.

Yet even with as much as she knew, Magda still didn’t know nearly enough about the various matters he had been involved in. She still didn’t know why he had killed himself.

A number of those she had spoken with had been more interested in talking to her, than about Baraccus. They wanted to know about the dream walkers, and if what they had heard from people who had been at the council meeting the day she had gone before them, covered in blood, was true. When Magda had confirmed that it was, they asked about the devotion that was said to be able to protect people’s minds. She had given her counsel to anyone who had wanted it. Some of those people had listened with open minds and had been grateful. Some weren’t interested in being allied with Alric Rahl.

A few of the gifted, she learned, had already met with Lord Rahl and had already taken up the bond to him.

At first, after Lord Rahl had left the Keep, Magda had been worried about the bond working once he was gone. To her surprise, she had discovered that she could sense him through that bond. It was the strangest feeling, but through that link she could feel her connection to him, tell the direction he was in, and sense the distance. It was a reassuring connection that let her know she was safe from the dream walkers.

Now, with the summer wearing on and the secrets behind Baraccus’s death haunting her at every turn, the only thing left was to try Tilly’s original suggestion. She still didn’t like the idea, especially in light of the new dangers down in the Keep, but Magda had reached a dead end in her search for answers. In the back of her mind, she also feared to lose the chance should the dream walker get to the woman first.

Despite her misgivings, Tilly seemed to understand Magda’s need to find answers as to why Baraccus had killed himself. Tilly thought that if she went to see the woman, it would at least help bring peace to Magda’s heart. Magda was looking for more than peace. She wanted answers.

The passageway finally emptied them out into a vast, narrow chamber that rose up like an enormous split inside the mountain. Fine-grained granite blocks lined the soaring walls. The chamber was perhaps half a dozen stories high, yet only as wide as the public corridors up in the Keep where merchants sometimes sold their wares from small carts or stands.

The narrow hall was so long that Magda couldn’t make out faces of people at the far end. In some cases she couldn’t even make out their gender. She was able to make out the dots of various colors of robes, denoting rank and duties.

Magda found herself somewhat relieved to see people again, relieved not to be alone in the dark passageways. The screams she had heard, and learning that men had just died, made her own loss fresh again.

Up near the lofty top of one of the long walls, slits were open to the night sky. Bats up high darted about, chasing bugs.

One of the Keep’s young cats sat on its haunches, peeking around the corner, its big green eyes watching the bats. It was obviously hungry. Feeling sorry for the scrawny black cat, Magda pulled a small bundle of chicken strips from her waist pouch. She unwrapped the meal she had brought along and tossed a small piece down to the hungry cat. As long as she had it out, Magda handed Tilly a strip and took one for herself before replacing the bundle in her waist pouch. The cat pounced and devoured the unexpected prize as Magda and Tilly went on their way, each nibbling at her own snack.

Magda had been to the enormous room several times, though by a more agreeable route, so she knew that it was a central hub leading to a number of important areas of the lower Keep. The first time she had been to the place, Baraccus had told her that the slits along the top of one of the walls helped the chamber serve as a ventilation chimney, drawing air through the lower Keep in order to provide a bit of fresh air.

The open slits were also one of the ways that birds sometimes found their way into the Keep. It wasn’t uncommon to find a small bird lost in the halls. Sometimes grackles found their way into dining halls, where they hopped around on the ground looking for crumbs, or even boldly stole food right off people’s plates.

Magda could see several sparrows that had obviously found their way in via the high slits, roosting on supports near the tops of the wall. She even spotted a raven perched on a beam, its feathers fluffed up, its black eyes watching the people down below.

With it being hotter outside than in, the ventilation openings seemed to be working in reverse this night, letting muggy air sink into the room and leaving the place feeling clammy. A haze of smoke coming from work areas had stratified throughout the room.

Stone stairs built tight against the wall to the right led to long, narrow balconies with widely spaced openings. Some had doors, while most were passageways to different areas.

Many of the people in the room seemed in a hurry, but Magda was used to seeing people in the Keep in a hurry. As large as the place was, it wasn’t uncommon for a journey between areas to take hours. Delaying for any reason, such as to chat, could in certain cases cause an errand to end up taking the better part of the day. That was probably why Tilly preferred the mostly deserted secondary passageways.

When Tilly saw Magda staring at carts piled high with bloody bandages parked haphazardly along one wall, she leaned closer and whispered, “Down here, in the matters these people deal in, errors are costly. Even worse, they are frequently punished by death.”

Magda didn’t have to ask what Tilly was talking about. She had escorted Baraccus to the place several times when he needed to speak with some of his wizards working on weapons for the war effort.

They were entering the area of the Keep where some of those weapons were created out of people.

While she understood the need, she was still appalled by the very idea of using magic to alter a person’s nature, to change who they were—in some cases to something no longer even human. She found the practice of changing people in such ways to be beyond abhorrent.

“Over there.” Tilly gestured to an entryway, set back into the shadows, some distance down on the far side of the vast chamber. “We must go down that way.”

Magda nodded. She knew of the place, of course, though she had never had reason to go down there before. She pressed a hand against the pang of anxiety tightening in her stomach.

As they made their way along and diagonally across the chamber, she tried as best she could to keep her face concealed by the cowl of her cloak. She wasn’t going to go out of her way to prevent people from recognizing her, but she wasn’t going to deliberately let people know she was there if she didn’t have to. The echo of her every footstep, though, whispered through the cavernous room, as if to betray her.

Glancing out from the edge of the hood of her cloak, Magda saw gifted people she recognized. Even though she was doing nothing wrong, she didn’t want to stop to talk with them or have to explain her purpose. It was nobody’s business. She kept the hood pulled forward.

Baraccus had often told her that if she was doing something important, she shouldn’t tell people anything they didn’t need to know. He lived his life by that rule. In fact, he often wouldn’t even tell Magda about things he thought she didn’t need to know.

Like why he had killed himself.

She was certain that what Baraccus had done was not the simple suicide it had appeared to be to those who didn’t know him as well as she did. Magda knew that it was more complicated than that. Suicide was simply not consistent with his character, so she knew that there must be more to it, that there must be a larger purpose to it. She also knew that for Baraccus to sacrifice his life, that purpose had to have been vitally important.

She also suspected that this time it was different in that he really did want her to find the reason behind it. His last words, in the note he had left for her, seemed to say as much. His voice still rang in her head with his words from the note.

Your destiny is to find truth.

One way or another, Magda intended to discover the truth behind his death.

As they made their way through the immense room, she saw that the series of arched recessed areas in the wall to the left served as workstations. People stood over the workbenches filing, hammering, cutting, and shaping metal, but in some cases wood. Back beyond some of those arched work areas were large rooms, most with big rolling doors pushed open to each side, probably to provide fresh air.